It is becoming more important to be able to provide telecommunication services to fixed and mobile subscribers as efficiently and inexpensively as possible. Further, the increased use of mobile applications has resulted in much focus on developing wireless systems capable of delivering large amounts of data at high speed.
Development of more efficient and higher bandwidth wireless networks has become increasingly important and addressing issues of how to maximize efficiencies in such networks is ongoing.
Proximity-based applications and services represent a fast growing social and technological trend that may have a major impact on the evolution of cellular wireless/mobile broadband technologies. These services are based on the awareness that two devices or two users are close to each other and, thus, may be able to directly communicate with each other in a device-to-device (D2D) configuration (also known as LTE Direct). Proximity-based applications include social networking, mobile commerce, advertisement, gaming, etc. D2D communication may also be important to public safety first responders, who may be able to use D2D to communicate without overloading a base station or evolved Node B (eNB, also referred to as eNodeB or E-UTRAN Node B). In addition, the use of D2D communication can result in offloading some traffic from a cellular network.